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It’s weird to think three of my formative Cal football years have been spent agonizing over the play of Nate Longshore. And the agony was perpetual; he never seemed bad enough to be benched, but never good enough to be lauded. He was the perfect polarizer, someone who eternally frustrated you, yet never seemed entirely […]

Twelve games, fifteen weeks. How quickly the time goes. Football is one of those sports where you can ride the highs but escape the lows without feeling like you’re wasting an epic proportion of your time. If you sense a down year coming, if the season goes south, you can quit it easily and not […]

Quarterback: 11-25 for 117 yards isn’t good. But then again, Riley was getting battered around like a pinball for much of the final three quarters. Getting rushed not only from the edges, but in between the tackles, at the gaps, from the sidelines, whatever. Nevertheless, other than the early Tucker touchdown, Riley only had flashes […]

Nate Longshore: Another strange performance. It wasn’t like Nate was bad, even though he had those two interceptions called back on bizarro penalties. Interestingly enough he seemingly replicated his 2006 USC performance with three nice rollouts. But the offense moved like it was playing in a mudstorm (three timeouts had to be called to avoid […]

More postgame thoughts: Hydrotech at the Golden Blogs, The Bear Will Not Quit, Bears With Fangs, Oski Talk, Ken’s podcast from Excuse Me For My Voice. Quarterback: To his credit, Riley was looking good out of the blocks after that “whaaa?” interception. Kevin converted all of his remaining third down opportunities into first down, first down, […]

Thanks to Tony for saving me for this weekend. It’s going to be a sporadic run to the finish. Um, yeah, I went to the game. I was actually standing next to the CGB guys, which was as surreal as it sounds. It was made even better by the fact that I could barely speak. […]

We are halfway through what’s shaping like another modest California football season–decent rewards with moderate fulfillment. Naturally, only in college football would a 4-2 start get fans groaning. Coming off a head-scratching loss to an offensively potent but inconsistent Arizona Wildcats team, the murmurs of discontent grow louder than ever. The loss, by the measuring […]

Nate Longshore: We’ve seen this script before. It’s the typical Nate Longshore game we’ve seen the past two years. Let’s move on before people start yelling. Grade: C Kevin Riley: Ditto. Grade: C Running backs: Just when it looked like Arizona was ready to run us off the field, Jahvid Best scorched the Wildcats and […]

The Bear Will Not Quit talks on Arizona’s spread offense “How do you defend against [archnemesis/former Texas Tech OC’s Sonny Dykes’s spread] offense? 1. You must limit yards after the catch. When this offense racks up 40+ points, it is due to big gains off short passes. Think of how the Patriots used Wes Welker […]

After Rob Calonge gave this site massive props in putting us in the “Best Blogs” category with other worthy contenders and adding us to his Oski’s Favorites linkroll, it was time to return the favor. I wrote up an article in the SF Examiner discussing the divisive nature of Cal fans and the quarterback debate […]